Karate instructor chops his way into Ripley's Believe It or Not book

With a nickname like “Big K,” you would expect Kevin Taylor to be larger than your average human.

Check. At 6-foot, 285 pounds, “Big” is an accurate description.

As a fourth-degree black belt in karate and multiple world champion and record holder in the sport of speed brick-breaking, Taylor seems like the perfect person to tag along if one finds themselves traveling down a dark alley at night.

Check. Sort of.Taylor is more of a teddy bear than an assassin. Laid back, extremely polite, full of “yes sirs and “no sirs,” Taylor is not a violent person. He just has a violent vocation.

But concrete bricks are his victims.

“Violence is a sign of insecurity. Violent people are afraid of themselves,” he said. “They were picked on perhaps, and now they put their guard up. They become violent and mean and pick on weaker people. But guess what? That brick ain’t gonna change because it can’t talk. It can’t move. You’ve got to make it move. When you are relaxed inside and don’t want to hurt anyone, that’s how I work. I don’t let that brick stop me.”

On the contrary, rather than stopping him, breaking bricks has propelled Taylor, a Warren resident, around the world. He has performed his unique talent on television programs in Japan, Italy and Turkey and completed demonstrations elsewhere.

Here in the United States, he has performed on Fox Sports Best Damn Sports Show, NBC’s America’s Got Talent and NBC’s Today Show Live at Rockefeller Center in New York City, among others.

He holds three Guinness Book of World Records for speed brick breaking and is the current standard bearer, breaking 584 bricks with his hands in 57.5 seconds.

It is that record landed him in the most recent addition of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not Dare to Look,” which hit bookstores on Sept. 10.

Taylor is featured in the “Raw Strength” section of the book, between a man who broke 30 baseball bats over his leg in under 60 seconds and an Indian strongman who tore through 50, 2,000-page phonebooks in three minutes with his bare hands. The hardcover, coffee-table styled book features 245 pages of oddities and records from around the world.

As Taylor describes it, the “raw strength” category might be the wrong placement for his achievement. Yes, he is strong. As a young blue-belt at a karate tournament, he broke an opponent’s shoulder with a padded back fist. It was after that incident that his teacher suggested he start breaking inanimate objects rather than people.

But he insists it is speed, not power and a strong mind that has led him to the brick-breaking records. Rather than driving through a stack of five or six one-inch thick concrete bricks and risking injury to his hands or arms, he snaps at each pile with well-practiced form and weight distribution, and his hands are a blur while moving down the line.

Outside his karate studio, Community Fitness Martial Arts Academy in Warren, he gave a brief demonstration. As curious onlookers gathered, he challenged a woman that he could break 30 bricks faster than she could drink a less-than-full Dixie cup of water.

When it was over, Taylor had destroyed the 30 bricks, set in six stacks, five bricks high, in 1.7 seconds. The woman, with water splashed across the front of her shirt and water still in her cup, finished a distant second.

To steal from Muhammad Ali, even at 45 years old, Taylor can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

“It’s not harder, it’s faster,” he said of his technique. “I have the ability to transfer my power instantly. I don’t have to meditate like other people do, or sit there and conjure up spirit. I’ve got instant chi (an ancient reference to life force). I can focus instantly. A lot of people think I’m an alien because I can do these feats and I never get hurt.”

But Big K is indeed human. In April 2009, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He changed his diet, started taking medication and only five months later set a world distance record by breaking 809 bricks over a distance of 100 yards.

He put on that exhibition in downtown Mount Clemens to raise awareness about women and child abuse. That day, he again proved he was human with an act of humanity.

These days, Kevin Taylor still puts on his exhibitions. This summer, he appeared on a television show in Turkey, breaking tempered glass car windows with his hands. He serves as the chief instructor at his Warren school and another in Madison Heights and hopes to continue to motivate his students with his efforts.

“Yes, I do it to motivate my students. I do it to show that you don’t have to be built like Bruce Lee to be a great martial artist. You don’t have to kick the lights out to be a martial artist,” he said.

“I teach them you have to have a pure understanding of yourself, in your heart and in your mind. You have to be humble. You have to teach yourself something. If you have pride or envy, you can’t teach yourself anything.”

For his next exhibition, Kevin Taylor plans to crush 10, 31-gallon galvanized metal garbage cans from 5-feet tall to under six inches in less than a minute for a Guinness Book of World Records television program. He said the program will be produced in either Egypt, Turkey or Italy in 2014.